Chinese Learners' Perception and Production of English Consonants /n/ /l/ and /r/

Abstract：At present, there are many researches on second language learners’ perception and production of English vowels and consonants. However, most of the previous studies focus on Japanese learners’ perception and production of English consonants such as /l/ /n/ and /r/. Some Chinese learners also have difficulties learning these three English consonants. Thus, this paper tries to study Chinese English learners’ perception and production of English consonants /n/ /l/ and /r/. The purpose is to find out the factors that affect Chinese learners’ pronunciation of /n/ /l/ and /r/, so as to help Chinese learners improve the efficiency of learning English.

First, three British native speakers were invited to record the English stimuli for the study. All the three native speakers speak RP English. The English stimuli are English words with CVC structure, starting with  one of the three consonants /l/ /n/ or /r/. Also 32 Chinese undergraduates from Jiangsu University of Science and Technology were recruited for this study. The students were pided into two groups according to their dialect: The first group includes16 students who are able to clearly distinguish between the Chinese consonants /n/ /l/ and /r/ (The following appear in the form of G1); the second group consists of 16 students who can’t distinguish these three consonants (The following appear  in the form of G2).

This study includes two experiments: (1) Chinese learners' perception of English consonants /n/ /l/ and /r/. (2) Chinese learners’ production of English consonants /n/ /l/ and /r/. During the perceptual experiment, 32 Chinese students were instructed to listen to the English

stimuli with a selection of VCV token nonsense words. Then, they need to find similar or same phonemes from 24 Chinese consonant categories. The results showed that, (1) generally speaking, the Chinese learners can distinguish these three consonants. The perception of /r/ shows better results than /n/ /l/. (2) the students in G1 performed better than the students in G2. The students in G2 perceive /n/ and /l/ as multiple target Chinese consonants.

In the production experiments, 6 Chinese learners (3 from each group) were required to record the same English materials as the British native speakers and the corresponding Mandarin materials in the phonetic lab. Their recording were annotated and analyzed with PRAAT. The results showed that, (1) The spectrum of Chinese learners’ English consonant /r/ is similar to that of English native speakers; (2) The spectrum of Chinese learners of English consonants /n/ is closer to that of British speakers than that of /l/.

This paper can help us understand Chinese learners’ process of learning English consonants /n/ /l/ and /r/, and provide some experimental data for second language acquisition.

Keywords: consonant perception; consonant production; English consonants /n/ /l/ and /r/.

中国学习者对英语 /n/ /l/ /r/ 的感知和产出研究

摘要：目前，国内外有很多对二语学习者英语辅音和元音的感知和产出研究。但是 先前的研究大多是对日本学习者对英语辅音 /n/ /l/ 和 /r/ 的感知和产出研 究。但是一些中国学习者在这三组英语辅音学习过程中也有一些困难。因此，本 文考察了中国学习者对英语辅音/n/ /l/ 和 /r/ 的感知和产出。目的是找出影 响发音的因素，帮助中国学习者提高学习英语的效率。

首先，3 个英国人被邀请来参与此次实验的英语刺激对的录音。3 位母语为 英语者都能够说 RP 英语。英语刺激对是 CVC 结构，以辅音 /l/ /n/ 和 /r/ 开 头的英语单词。还有 32 名中国学习者参与实验，均来自江苏科技大学的本科生， 根据自己方言是否能够准确辨别辅音 /n/ /l/ /r/，将其分为两组，16 名分得 清（下文皆以 G1 形式出现）和 16 名分不清的学习者（下文皆以 G2 形式出现）。